A 55-year-old local man is recovering in hospital after falling 60 feet down a cliff onto rocks near Watchet harbour on Tuesday.
His friends called the “a miraculous escape from serious injury – or much worse”.
The man, who has asked not to be named, managed to call for help on his mobile phone.
Two lifeboats, a helicopter, police and rescuers from the nearby Watchet Coastguard station answered the man’s faint distress call and found him lying on rocks out of sight of passers-by.
He was airlifted to Bristol’s Southmead Hospital with what paramedics at the scene feared could be serious head, neck, back and spinal injuries.
But on Wednesday friends learned that he had suffered severe bruising and lacerations but no broken bones: “We have every reason to believe he will make a good recovery,” one said.
A retired policeman and former café owner, the man – who has been recovering from a heart condition - is well-known in the town. He was taking a morning walk along Splash Point, near a wartime gun emplacement overlooking the harbour, when the accident happened and he fell into rocks which would later have been covered by the rising tide.